Tag Archives: marketing

Mixed-media artist David Firth (@DAVID_FIRTH) perhaps most well known for his bizarre, unsettling yet endearing “Salad Fingers” series is still at it and taking the strange to new, chilling heights. His latest released project, a short animated film entitled “Cream”.

The short is animated in a style that will be familiar to fans of Firth’s previous works, but it has taken on a starkly realistic quality, utilizing actual faces, natural textures and drab yet shocking color to truly drive home an atmosphere of strange normalcy. We are first introduced to a new miracle product, a cream, branded as Cream, that appears to be limitless in it’s uses. Cream cures acne, it can cure all ailments major and minor, it can regrow your lawn, it can even (when injected directly into the brain) increase your I.Q.

Our main character, Dr. Bellifer, has struck gold and watches as his invention soars in popularity and cosmic power. There is no stopping Cream. Cream becomes so much more than was originally intended, much to the chagrin of the good doctor. Go on and see for yourself what horrible wonders Cream can commit.

David Firth is a master of his craft, distorting reality with enough finesse to disturb yet equally draw one into his underlying message. Though the meaning may seem as clear as the blemish on one’s face (there’s a Cream for that.), we are privy to a multi-layered commentary on consumption, medicine, advertising, the ever present menace that can be the media and even our own personal connection to the world outside. Whether intended or not, Firth has command of imagery and dialogue, that when married together generates the reflective surface we so often forget to peer into when making purchases, large and small decisions and most importantly what we put our trust and faith into. Who can we truly say has our best interest at heart?

There is much to be gleaned from this twelve minute meditation on the human condition and how each of us can be manipulated into any reaction given the right circumstance, only to be led back into the fold for another go around.

I can only hope we will see more from Mr. Firth in the very near future, as he continues to terrify, sicken and delight me in good measure.

You can watch ‘Cream’ and many of his other polarizing projects on David’s YouTube Channel here: http://bit.ly/2rVrnRQ

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Advertising Has Shown Me the Mirror of Time

by Anthony Wetmore (@TheMisterPipes, GhostConch)

Something a little strange to start off your NerdHall Monday.

Early this morning I was waiting in an office, naturally a television was playing the early news, nothing to out of the ordinary until there was a pause for commercial break. Still not having looked I was drawn in not by the flashy, yet responsible looking family SUV by Honda weirdly dubbed “Pilot”, but a stray, almost disinterested delivery of the opening line to Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”. Within the 30 seconds, the entire Honda family has half-sung through to the chorus, unaware of the chills they bestowed upon me, and the clicking wheels within my brain.

“Why would this child pull this twenty-one year old song seemingly from the blue?” (pun unintended) Then it struck me, though the age appropriate parents seemed far older to me, they were looking to grab my attention. Not me personally of course, my tinfoil hat is always firmly in place, but my age category.

Intoning the words of a young Rivers Cuomo to somehow send out a signal to those just entering post-collegiate life, the workforce, or some other personal money/home making endeavor. Isn’t it time you found your “Mary Tyler Moore”? Isn’t it time you leave the hallowed halls of “Whatsamatta U” find your shoes and get in a Honda and pilot a Pilot, kids and Grandpa in tow?

Perhaps none of this is the case and they just found the Weezer track to be catchy, recognizable and comforting enough to get you into a 2016 Pilot, but deep within me I know that is probably not the case. Or perhaps I should take up marketing and overthink each ad to perfection. They could have easily used something from a further gone era to evoke deeper nostalgia as well as something more recent for a strangely similar effect. Either way, I’m goin’ surfin’, I’m still afloat.

A thank you to Honda for making me question several aspects of life and how we live it with the simple commission of a song that effects me on apparent deep levels, arising suspicion enough to provide you with this nervous musing.

This is no way an endorsement from Honda, though that would be pretty sweet.